“Before the clouds appeared the rain came upon me.”—Arabic Proverb. Two months had passed in which Zarah had absolutely failed to break her prisoners’ indomitable spirit; two months in which her passion for the white man and her hate for the white girl had grown deeper and fiercer.
With the density of some women, she clung with an extraordinary and ridiculous tenacity to the belief that, if she only threatened or cajoled enough and held her rival up plainly enough to ridicule or contempt, she would ultimately win Ralph Trenchard’s love.
Also did fear urge her to force or cajole him into becoming her husband.
She knew her own men were blown like cotton threads before every passing gust of their facile emotions, and that their suddenly aroused hatred of Ralph Trenchard had given place to genuine admiration; by that she had come to realize she had no real hold over them and that, where they had obeyed her father, the Sheikh, through genuine love, they merely obeyed her because it pleased them so to do.
She was just their nominal head. She pleased their sense of beauty, and they almost worshipped her for her courage in raids, but they were too well fed, too sure of an unfailing supply of the necessities of life, too secure against intrusion and interference to wish to relieve her of the reins of government with its attendant burdens.
If they had formed one of the itinerant groups of Bedouins which have to literally fight for their existence[248] as they flee across the desert, she knew they would not have tolerated her for a day.
True, they made no effort to run counter to her orders and to ameliorate the white man’s position. They considered the rough hut he lived in on the far side of the plateau, and the rough food sent him, quite good enough for any infidel; but they greeted him with friendly shouts when he arrived to teach them his tricks of cunning, and did their best to beat him at his own game.
If it had not been for his overwhelming anxiety for the future and for Helen, whom he knew, by hearsay, to be a very slave to the tyrannical Arabian, Ralph Trenchard would not have complained of his life or his treatment. True, he hated the half-caste, who did his best to humiliate him in the eyes of the men and, in a moment of forgetfulness in the early days, had forcibly rebelled against his constant espionage and irritating presence. He had been instantly cured of the spirit of rebellion by the sight which, with a mocking laugh, the Nubian had pointed out to him, of Helen, kneeling by the river surrounded by jeering women, as she washed the Arabian’s linen.
“And worse will happen, thou infidel, if thou dar’st disobey my mistress’s commands. Mohammed the Prophet of Allah decreed in his understanding that unto the faithful should be four wives given, neither did he in his wisdom say aught against an infidel wife being of the four. Nay! in thine eyes I see the lust to kill. The life of the white woman pays forfeit for my life; thy life if the white woman essays to shorten the days of Zarah the Beautiful.”
For fear of something worse than death befalling the beautiful, splendid girl he loved, he dared do nothing. For every word, for every act of rebellion on his part, some task even more menial than those she daily performed would be forced upon her; for any attempt he might make upon the Nubian’s life, to assuage his own outraged feelings, her life would be taken.
And there seemed no possible way out.
[249]
Not only did the Nubian dog his footsteps, but Yussuf, upon whom he had counted in his heart of hearts, had failed him, and without his help nothing could be done, no communication with Helen effected, no plans for escape made.
He saw Yussuf every day seated amongst the men gathered to learn the arts of wrestling and jiu-jitsu, and of all the little crowd he seemed to be the only one who still cherished his hatred for the infidel. He spat with vigour when the white man passed, and at other times shouted various abusive or ribald remarks, whilst urging his brethren to down the unbeliever in the tests of strength and cunning, for the glory of Allah the one and only God.
His days were most humiliatingly mapped out for him by the Nubian.
There seemed to be no satisfying the men’s craving to master the rudiments of wrestling.
From two hours after sunrise until the first moment of the great noonday heat they milled and boxed, with intervals of single-stick and jiu-jitsu, in which they invariably forgot instructions, lost their self-control and temper, and almost broke each other’s legs, arms, heads or backs.
The afternoons were passed in the heavy, unrefreshing sleep induced by great heat; from the moment the sun slipped down behind the topmost mountain peaks, throwing deep shadows across the plateau, they were at it again until the hour of the one big meal of the day, which takes place about two hours after sunset.
The best part of the night they passed in gambling, story telling, singing, or tearing over the desert on horseback, Ralph Trenchard accompanying them, invariably shadowed by the Nubian.
To his intense relief, Zarah left him entirely alone for the first month. Fully aware that he was surrounded by spies, he gave no sign of the rage which swept him each[250] time he caught sight of Helen following the Arabian, fanning her or holding an umbrella over her; or descending the steps to the river with a great earthenware vessel on her shoulder, which she would fill for the tyrant’s bath and carry up the steep steps to her dwelling.
Zarah had passed the month in trying to break Helen’s splendid spirit, ignorant of the strength which real love gives to those who, either through physical weakness or untoward circumstances, are at the mercy of those moral cowards who take advantage of their distress or defencelessness. Cowards who, amongst the educated and the ignorant, the clergy, the laity, in the highest profession or in trade, place themselves morally on the level of the man who kicks his dog or hits his opponent when he is down.
She made no impression on the English girl.
Strong in her love, certain that her prayers for help would be answered, she endured all things.
She waited on the Arabian hand and foot, climbed the ladder to the golden cage, wherein Zarah lay during the siesta, with coffee, sherbet, or whatever she desired, and descended and climbed again with ever the sweetest smile in her steady, blue eyes. She brushed and combed the red curls until her arms ached; carried and fetched and read aloud and looked after the birds; fanned the woman, fetched water from the river for her bath, washed the silken garments, and waited upon her at meals, without a murmur on her lips or a shadow in her eyes.
She spoke to no one, but through the gossiping of the women learned that the body of the surly negress had not been discovered, and that Zarah, owing to a certain spirit of insubordination that had lately swept through the camp, had not dared to punish the grooms of the kennels for their gross carelessness.
She was continually surrounded by the women, who, ignorant of the lies told them, jeered at and laughed at her and did everything in their power to make her tasks[251] even yet more distasteful. When away from Zarah her every movement was spied upon and reported.
She slept in a hut in which tools had been stored during the alterations to the building, rough and infinitely uncomfortable, but a very haven of refuge at the end of the day when she returned, to fling herself on her knees and pray for strength and patience.
If only she had known it, spies watched her at her prayers, noting the look of peace which followed quickly upon them, and the content with which she stretched herself upon the bed composed of rugs flung upon the sand; watched her asleep and at her toilette, and ran to make report on all things, especially upon the delight she seemed to take in combing her masses of beautiful hair and in her bath in the river long before the dawn.
And when a rough hand shook Helen out of her sleep and ordered her to Zarah’s presence, it seemed that God had turned a deaf ear to her prayers and that fear must, after all, dominate her splendid courage.
It was long after midnight when, with a heavily beating heart, she entered the luxurious room.
Two Abyssinian women, nude save for a short petticoat which stopped above the knees, stood behind the divan upon which Zarah lay smoking a naghileh. She lay and looked at Helen without a word, hating her for the ethereal look, which heightened her beauty and had come to her in her days of toil and privation.
“I am told,” she said after a while in Arabic, “that the hut you sleep in is not clean, that your habits are not the cleanly habits of the Mohammedan, that your hair has not escaped contamination from the disorder in your hut; therefore——”
When Helen interrupted her quickly, she looked back at the tittering black women and laughed.
“How can you say such a thing! I am perfectly clean, my clothes are in holes through being washed on the stones, my hair....” To her own undoing and[252] yet, if she had but known it, as an answer to her prayers for help, she undid the great golden plaits and shook the rippling mass out over her shoulders, holding long strands at arm’s length until even the negresses exclaimed at the glory of its sheen. “My hair is combed and brushed every day and washed once a week; it is perfectly clean!”
Zarah laughed as she puffed at her hubble-bubble, inhaling the fumes of the tobacco of Oman, which is calculated to absolutely stun the uninitiated in its gunpowder strength.
“Anyway, I do not like these tales of uncleanliness to be spread amongst my women, Helen R-r-aynor-r,” she said curtly at last. “I therefore have decided to keep you beneath my eyes. You will sleep in my room, on a mat, you will bathe under the supervision of this slave here, who will now cut your hair off so that you are clean.”
“I’ll kill her if she touches me!” Helen cried sharply, and, gathering the glory of her hair round about her, ran to a table upon which lay an ornamented but most workmanlike dagger. She loved her glorious, naturally curling hair, looking upon it, with her beautiful teeth, as the greatest asset with which nature had endowed her. Her lover loved it, and had often told her that she had ensnared his heart in its golden mesh. Forgetting her impossible position as prisoner and the utter futility of any effort at resistance, determined to fight for the glorious mantle which covered her to her knees, she picked up the dagger as the two gigantic women approached her.
“I’ll kill the first one of you who touches me!”
Zarah laughed and raised her hand.
“Go and find Al-Asad and bid him bind the white man and bring him here. Stop!”
Helen had thrown out her hands in surrender.
Even her hair would she willingly sacrifice in her great love, everything she would sacrifice except her honour, and that she knew was safe in a place abounding[253] with deep precipices and paths where the foothold was precarious.
Save for her tightly locked hands, she made no sign when the beautiful mass lay about her feet; in fact, with an almost superhuman effort of courage, she refrained from touching her shorn head, and leant down instead and picked up a handful of hair, which looked like a great skein of golden silk.
“It’s a pity to waste it, Zarah,” she said gently. “Why not stuff a pillow with it?”
The Arabian bit hard on the amber mouthpiece of the naghileh. With her short hair curling round her face, Helen looked like an exquisite girl of fifteen, defenceless, helpless, and calculated to inspire pity in the heart of almost any man.
“Call Namlah!” She lashed the Abyssinian across the thigh when she had to repeat the order. “Art deaf or bereft of the use of thy limbs, thou fool!” she screamed, seizing the dagger from her belt and throwing it after the rapidly retreating negress, missing her shoulder by an inch as she emulated the speed of the ostrich through the doorway.
Namlah, upon whom Helen had counted in her heart of hearts, had failed her, and without her help nothing could be done, no communication with Ralph effected, no plans for escape made.
Of all the crowd of women who jeered and laughed at her she seemed to be the one who cherished the greatest hatred for her. She spat with vigour when the white girl passed, and at other times shouted various abusive and ribald remarks, urging the women to see that the unbeliever performed her menial tasks thoroughly, so as to enhance the glory of Allah the one and only God.
She ran in and prostrated herself before her dread mistress, then pulled the masses of hair roughly from under Helen’s feet an............